


Storm

by Beth Harker (chiana606), chiana606, RewriteThisStory



Category: Newsies (1992)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-24
Updated: 2015-02-24
Packaged: 2018-03-14 22:46:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3428318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiana606/pseuds/Beth%20Harker, https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiana606/pseuds/chiana606, https://archiveofourown.org/users/RewriteThisStory/pseuds/RewriteThisStory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life in Santa Fe is hard, but rewarding in ways that New York wasn't.  A sudden storm sends both David and Jack home early from work.  With extra time on their hands they discuss old friends and... catch up.</p><p>Post strike, domestic Javid in Santa Fe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Storm

**Author's Note:**

> Rated PG13 for non-descriptive sexual implications.

David was dry. The burning wood stove made the room smell nice, and the winter rain pattering against the window seem far away and pleasant. Every once in a while a loud crack of thunder would make David smile. He sat, cross-legged, upon his mattress. It wasn't even a bed. Just some old mattress on the floor of some old barn smack dab in the center of Santa Fe. Up until a week ago David had worked on the farm with Jack, looking after sheep, milking cows, and wondering what had happened to his life, even as Jack and that pathetic excuse for a mattress they shared had made it more than worthwhile when evening fell and they had time alone together.

Things were better now. David was surrounded by a small ring of medical books, having only recently found an apprenticeship with a local doctor named Nan. The job was interesting, and Nan was a good teacher. Having fulfilling work to do had filled in what was missing in David's life out west, and he was the happiest he could remember being in a long time. 

"Hey Davey," Jack called from just outside the door.

"Yeah! I'm here!"

The door swung open. Out of the corner of his eye, David could see Jack trudging in from the storm outside. Nan had sent David home at the first sign of drizzle, with an umbrella and about twenty books in tow. Now David was going over half a dozen fictional patients Nan had given him, and trying to figure out how to diagnose and treat their symptoms. 

"Put on dry clothes before you get sick," David ordered, then went back to his reading. It wasn't that he was planning on ignoring Jack. It was just that he was knee deep in the process of trying to contain an imaginary smallpox outbreak, and he was going about it with as much fervor as if it was actually happening. 

The next thing David knew, his thoughts we being interrupted by a steady stream of water as Jack, clad in his long johns, wrung his wet shirt out over the top of David's head.

"Jack!" David's stern voice was interrupted by a loud clap of thunder right near the house. David looked towards the window. The rain was coming down in huge fat drops, and the wind was howling. David softened just a little. "I didn't realize it was raining that hard."

Jack grinned, and plopped down next to David on the mattress. 

"You ever think of turning on a light in here?" Jack asked. "You're gonna go blind from reading in the dark. When's that going to come up in your doctorin' lessons?"

"I'm... Jack! Your hands are cold!" Jack had moved his hands to the nape of David's neck while he spoke, kneading into the skin there with fingers that were positively icy. David didn't even know whether he wanted to squirm away, or to let Jack keep doing what he was doing. "Aren't you going to get a towel for your hair, and go warm up over by the stove?"

"Just wanted to say hi." Jack pressed a kiss to David's temple, then leapt back to his feet to take David's advice and dry off a little. "So what're you working on so hard?" Jack asked, as he toweled off his hair.

"Smallpox pandemic," David said. "You have been vaccinated, haven't you? It's really bad. Seventy percent of patients die, and it's one of the most contagious illnesses on the face of the earth."

Jack shrugged, "I guess. Probably one of those jabs I got at the Refuge. They're funny about gettin' sick there." 

Jack picked up the nearest of David's books, pretended to look at it for a moment, and then closed it. "I have a better idea," he said. "What do you say we let smallpox ravage the village for a while, and fix up some grub."

"I ate. I had pickles for lunch. I'm just thinking we should get you vaccinated, to be certain. Against everything."

"You're supposed to eat more than once a day, Dave. And probably more than just pickles. Don't your books tell you that?"

"Sometimes." David took Jack's hand and let himself be pulled up off the mattress. "You should definitely eat in any case. Carrying bales of hay is hungry work." David had been doing that himself right up until very recently, so it wasn't like he'd forgotten.

Jack gave David a strange, sideways look. David knew why. Being an apprentice didn't pay much. The only reason that it paid anything was because Nan had realized that David would never be able to take up the position without receiving some kind of compensation for his work. Even so, it paid a lot less than farm work did, and Jack had accidentally found the list David had made of what changes he was going to make in his life to avoid being a drain on the already shaky finances of their little household. 

"Not like a body don't get hungry just cause it ain't farming," Jack said.

"Now you sound like my mom."

"I sound like a lovesick idiot giving medical advice to his doctor." Jack reddened just a bit. He almost never used the word love. It was hard for him, David knew, and it was utterly disarming. Any protests David had towards eating his dinner died in his throat. 

"My mind's really been on my work," David told Jack, as he went to the cupboards to try and rummage for something easy that would make a good dinner. "Not in a bad way. It's interesting. It's much more interesting than school ever was. Anyway, I need to figure out what resources to use on the smallpox outbreak, and how to stop the spread as well. All these people are sick, you see, and certain populations within the community are still unvaccinated. I have to find a place to quarantine the sick people outside of the normal city hospital, then I need to stretch some shockingly meager funds to get the vaccine out to everyone who needs it. Some mothers and fathers are embarrassed that they can't afford the vaccine, so they won't admit that they haven't done it."

All of this was said in a cheerful tone of voice, which would have been unnerving if the outbreak was real. After David's first day of work with Nan he had come home and explained the Black Death to Jack with too much gravity, and scared him into thinking that it was really happening. 

Jack moved his hand down across his face, like he was trying to wipe his smile away. "After dinner, Mouth. You can draw me a map or whatever. Right now we eat, and talk about things that won't kill us.

They'd managed to find some dried beef and bread, so they sat down at the table to eat that.

"You get to treat any patients today?"

"Don't ask questions with your mouth full," David scolded. He got a lot of dramatic, open mouthed chewing in retribution. He should have expected that. David took a bite of his own food, chewed, and swallowed before answering. 

"No patients. Nan has a skeleton, and we did some work with that. She calls it 'Uncle Bones', can you imagine? We went over the parts today. I knew a lot of them already, to be honest. We discussed where the organs would be, since of course Uncle Bones doesn't have any. We might do work on cadavers," David made a face at that but then went on, undaunted. "We stopped by a patient's house, but Nan did most of the doctoring, which is right, because she's the one of us who is actually a full-fledged doctor. The little boy we were looking at had strep throat which, by the way, is also contagious."

Jack nodded. He had been gazing at the mattress with kind of a far off look in his eyes, but he seemed to spring into attention again at David's pause in the conversation. 

"I'm sure you washed your hands," Jack said, smiling as he leaned in closer to David across the table.

"Nan says I washed them more vigorously than was strictly necessa---"

Jack grabbed on to the front of David's shirt, pulling him in closer for a kiss. He kissed David once on his mouth, and twice across the line of his jaw, then backed off, casually popping a piece of bread into his mouth. "Uncle Bones, huh? Guess you remembered some of that astronomy stuff that you and Mush was talking about that time."

"Anatomy," David corrected.

"Anemone." Jack kissed him again. "I wonder how ole Mush is doin'?"

The question was such a whiplash change from what Jack had been doing with his lips that David was taken aback. Then he saw him smirking, and understood. Jack wanted him to say that he wasn't going to talk about Mush at a time like this, and keep kissing him. Well, this was a game of wills that David could play. Biting his lower lip to keep from smiling, David looked away from Jack and down at what was left of his meal, picking at some crumbs on his plate.

"Mush is working in a toy factory," David said. "And not answering letters. He stopped by to say hi to Sarah after I last wrote, and tell her to tell me that he's doing well."

Jack nodded. David hadn't meant to get honestly carried away in a conversation about Mush, but the lack of letters from his old friend genuinely annoyed him. David wrote a lot of letters to his former Newsies friends, but didn't get a lot of response. Crutchy always answered, though his replies were short and just barely decipherable. Skittery replied, and did a pretty good job of it. Mush never sent anything, and neither did Blink.

"I don't know why he can't just send a letter," David went on, frowning. "It's not as though either of us cares how he spells things."

Jack scratched his head. "He's probably busy. Figures Sarah will tell us anyways. It ain't like the other guys got much to say anyway. It was the same for me back in New York. You know, got up, did backbreaking work for folks who don't care if you lives or dies, ate the special at Tibby's, went to bed at dark and got up at four. It ain't much of a life, and it ain't no fun to write letters about. I'm real happy we got away from that."

David nodded, but he wasn't satisfied. "I don't care if his life is interesting or not. He's my friend. I want to hear from him. Besides, my letters are boring. I know they are. I go on and on about everything. They're interesting to me, I guess, but the could be shorter."

"I'm sure he likes reading 'em Dave. He just don't write much. Not like he ever had much practice at it before."

David shrugged, "Anyway, I'll keep writing. Maybe something short like, 'Dear Mush, Hi. Your friend, David.' See how that works."

"Dave--" Jack wasn't eating anymore, but moving his bread back and forth between his hands. "Just keep writin'. He's getting 'em. Just don't expect nothin' back. It ain't personal. It's just the way things is, you know?"

"Yes, and when we don't like the way things are, we change them. We're really good at that. If we weren't, then we wouldn't be here."

Jack continued to toy with his bread. "This is different," he muttered. Jack sighed, and looked up at David, all the former playfulness gone from his face. "He's embarrassed, Dave. He don't write so good, that's all. He reads okay, but... he just ain't a writer, alright? It's the same for the other guys too."

"What, does he think I'll be shocked if I see a misspelled word? I'm not that much of a jerk. I wouldn't care."

"Listen. You went to school, Dave. All your letters make sense, the words are spelled right -- it's like readin' a book. When we write it's all marked up and a mess, and you can barely read it. How do you think that looks to us when we got your letter right next to us on a table staring up at us disapprovingly?"

"My letter would never disapprove of your letter!"

Jack screwed up his face, like he was thinking very hard about what to say and how to say it. "It's like this. You ain't good at stick ball, right? And, look, that's fine. I don't care that you ain't good at it, but you still don't like to play it, 'specially not with Skittery who hits harder than anyone else I know. Or... You don't like to run beside Swifty, right? I mean, you ain't fast, but you don't like to be reminded of it all the time."

"Don't you think it's a bit different if it's your only way of keeping in touch?" David asked, even you it was true that he sincerely hoped he'd never be in a position where running and stickball were his only methods of communicating with old friends. Letters were a lot more useful than either of those things anyway.

"He talks to Sarah. He goes and finds her after every letter. Do you think that's an accident? It ain't like they're in the same part of the city." Jack's shoulders were hunched over, his voice and features thick with annoyance. Well, it was his own fault. If he'd just understand what David was saying, then he wouldn't need to be annoyed.

"Maybe I'll get Sarah to talk him into writing. She probably could."

"Just... Let it be. Please." Jack picked at his food. "I bet Sarah gets it."

"I get it too." David moved his seat closer to Jack's, and grasped his shoulders. "Don't take lack of acceptance to mean the same as lack of understanding. 

"It's just... I'm the same as them, Dave. It's why I didn't write much. You know. Before you got here. It's just different for us."

"The problem," David said thoughtfully, "is that I can't travel halfway across the country and climb into bed with everybody who misses a letter..."

Jack barked out an astonished laugh.

"Nor would I want to!" David hastened to add.

David could see how Jack was regarding him, like he was trying to decide whether to continue fighting with him, or to let things go. After a second he shook his head, and reached out to run a hand through David's hair. 

"If you did, I 'spose I'd have to soak a few of my friends." Jack pulled David to his feet, and wrapped his arms around his waist. "I never had much of my own, and I don't share what I do now. These...." Jack paused in his speech to kiss David lightly on the lips, "are mine."

"Then I'm taking yours, since you said you aren't going to share mine with me. We could pool our mouths. Make them household property."

"Well, if we're sharing our mouths, I have a few ideas for what the should be doing," Jack said, with a suggested wave of his eyebrows that made David feel warm all over. He leaned in a little closer, so his forehead was resting against Jack's.

"You mean talking, right?" David said innocently, shifting so that when Jack tried to kiss him it hit his cheek instead of his lips. "You want to hear all the symptoms of the Black Death... right... now."

Jack had moved his mouth to David's neck, and he was tracing a line down it, sucking gently at the skin. For a moment David couldn't speak.

"I thought it was smallpox this time?" Jack murmured, his words tickling David's shoulder blade.

"Honestly," David said, determined to have the last word and come out on top of this little game. "Honestly, I'm just wondering if you want me enough that you'll remain... Interested... Even if I tell you what the bubonic plague does to the lymph nodes in your groin."

David punctuated his words by tracing up Jack's thigh with his fingers. The sound Jack made, assured him that he was still interested, even as Jack's mouth, fierce and hot against David's own, assured David that further discussion of contagious illnesses were not where his interests were.

**Author's Note:**

> The character Nan is not mine. I borrowed her from Jo's Boys by Louisa May Alcott.


End file.
